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  • From: Marjory <forestgarden@gvtc.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] How Much Land Does It Take To Become Food Self-Reliant
  • Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 07:23:13 -0500

Toby,

I just watched Food Inc. last night and that is a great summary of where trust has gotten us. I can't afford to buy all of the good food my family needs from honest farmers, so yes, damn right, I am growing my own. It is something I can do. It is not a full time job for me, as I have other responsabilites and work to do to cover the mortgage, the kids, and life.
It is this simple.
Yes, I too am wondering if your account has been hacked.

Marjory


Toby Hemenway wrote:
On May 12, 2010, at 10:28 AM, jamesdavid Sneed wrote:

That seems so disappointing, an elitist attitude that discourages people from
growing all their own food . . . . I find that independence impossible in
anywhere but the most remote regions, I am returning to those locales, which
to me is the REAL WORLD

Reality is often more disappointing than dreaming of something we've never tried; yes, my point was indeed to discourage people from the simplistic, near-impossible fantasy that when it gets tough they can just grow all their own food. I hope that idea dies soon; it's a terrible deterrent to facing a real solution. I beg you all: Stop thinking that way! And, James, when you return to the "real world," of the wild, just remember who made your equipment for you; that's how self-reliant you'll be. The "I'll harvest the wild" dream only insures the destruction of the last wild places.That's anti-permaculture: stay out of the bush, says Mollison, and he's right. With 7 billion people, all wild resources would be depleted in a matter of months. I was recently in Alaska, and kept running into people who thought they'd just hunt after the oil gets scarce. Not with the size of the population of Alaska. That's a horrifying thought: goodbye caribou, elk, deer, bear.
Growing all your own food is not permaculture. It's subsistence farming. If you love being a farmer, then do it. But if I remember Rain's stories of the Jeavons associate who grew his food for a year, he was working 40-80 hours a week for about 6 months on it, and 20-30 hours in the winter. And he did not have a job that year. That leaves little time for anything else, and ignores the issue of how to pay for land, housing, etc.. Is that what you want? What is the question that "grow your own food" is the answer to? It's probably the least secure and most labor-intensive way to obtain your food. Do you really trust no one else to grow food as well as you can? Or not trust yourself to be able to do something in exchange for it?
There is nothing in permaculture principles that suggests growing all your own food, or even any
food at all. Mollison, in the first pages of Intro to Pc, says it makes more sense to do what you
do well and support other people who are good at growing food sustainably. It's not permacultural
to limit yourself to "I must grow all my own food." It's permacultural to say "I
must take care of my food needs sustainably" and connect with your local community around
food in ways that create mutual support and a whole system. The lone farmer working to feed
him/herself is bad design. That's a critical function being supported only one way. An injury,
and you and your family starve. And the food bandits will hit you first, all alone out there,
long before they will attack the community where a few members farm and the others can stand
guard.

The "must grow all my own food" mindset is just more of the rugged
individualist, go-it-alone attitude that infects our culture. It's grounded in a lack
of trust. It's where we go first because it seems doable, easier than creating a
community, easier than participating and trusting in a network, but it's not a
solution. It's like buying a water filter when your tapwater isn't clean. It provides
personal safety but ignores the problem. Except that in food, it's a fantasy solution:
hardly anyone is really going to grow all their own food, but I think we're comforted
by imagining that we can. It's a natural early but simplistic response, and we need to
move beyond it to more sophisticated and realistic thinking that assesses the
possibilities and resources instead of running away to our back yard.

I don't see more than a tiny percentage of people returning to growing most
of their food. It is simply too radical a shift from present systems; there
is no direct path there unless your scenario is rapid rupture of societal
fabric followed by utter fear and atomization, while there are many direct
paths to many other effective food-security scenarios. For one, I think there
will be a huge increase in the number of market farmers specializing in a
modest variety of crops, some to eat, but most for income or trade.

BTW, I believe the people on Tikopia, like all Polynesians, got most of their
protein and a large part of their other food from the sea. So that enlarges
their footprint from 1.8 square miles to hundreds of square miles. To support
800 people from a square mile is impossible. Once again, that's running to a
simple answer--they just grew their own!--that misses the real pattern.

Grow food if you enjoy it and are good at it. If not, design a better way to
meet your food needs. That would be permaculture.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


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